Search found 57 matches
- Tue Jan 10, 2012 3:52 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements List
- Replies: 1
- Views: 28519
Re: Requirements List
⋅ The API will support both CIF 1.1 and CIF 2.0 . (Degree and form of support for non-standard features and other syntax variants is yet to be determined.) ⋅ The API will support both (1) fast, small-footprint operation, and (2) a rich, expressive, and convenient public interf...
- Tue Jan 10, 2012 2:06 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements List
- Replies: 1
- Views: 28519
Requirements List
This topic is for documenting API requirements gleaned from discussions elsewhere in the forum. Discussion of these requirements generally belongs in other topics. Editorial comments about the requirements documented here are welcome in this topic, but be aware that I plan to delete such comments af...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 11:31 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements for "core" features
- Replies: 9
- Views: 64963
Re: Requirements for "core" features
Returning to the "core" features. I would suggest considering (1) Open, read, update, create, close, delete a CIF file with or without supporting dictionaries. (2) Open, read, update, create, close, delete one or more datablocks withing a CIF file (3) Open, read, update, create, close, de...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 10:49 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements for "core" features
- Replies: 9
- Views: 64963
Re: Requirements for "core" features
Strange to say, fortran 77 is still heavily used. Now that there is an ISO C-binding spec for fortran 2xxx, C can be used to support fortran reasonably well, but even in that case there are people who absolutely refuse to mix C and fortran for sound reasons. I have seen a lot of Fortran 77, and I h...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:56 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Scope of the API - language support
- Replies: 3
- Views: 37981
Re: Scope of the API - language support
yayahjb wrote:Microsoft VS C compatibility is also important. That would mean avoiding
conflicts with C89.
That's fine by me.
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 9:40 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Scope of the API - features
- Replies: 14
- Views: 80256
Re: Scope of the API - features
Thank you, Herbert, I appreciate your insight. Having made the mistake of doing a non-validating CIF API and then adding validation to it -- I would say the biggest issues start in the design of the lexer and parser which need to be designed to allow for recovery after an error, rather than a hard a...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 7:04 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Scope of the API - features
- Replies: 14
- Views: 80256
Re: Scope of the API - features
As previously noted, I think failing to make allowances for validation in the initial design will greatly increased the difficulty in incorporating it later, while designing to include validation from the start costs very little and, when properly done can easily be turned off when efficiency or ot...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 6:10 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements for "core" features
- Replies: 9
- Views: 64963
Re: Requirements for "core" features
I would suggest two separate efforts: 1. A simple event-driven parser/writer for applications requiring a light footprint; and 2. A full stored tree/database based parser for maximal functionality That sounds analogous to SAX and DOM parsers in the XML world. Is that the sort of thing you have in m...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:42 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Requirements for "core" features
- Replies: 9
- Views: 64963
Requirements for "core" features
In the "Scope - Features" topic, James characterized the core features of a CIF API like so: (1) Open, read, write, close a CIF file (2) Read, write a key-value pair (3) Open/Create a loop structure (4) Read/Write packets from a loop structure (5) Add/remove columns from a loop structure H...
- Mon Jan 09, 2012 3:21 pm
- Forum: CIF Application Programming Interface
- Topic: Scope of the API - language support
- Replies: 3
- Views: 37981
Re: Scope of the API - language support
It is perhaps a question better considered later, but we will eventually need to decide on the native language(s) for the API. Having done that, we will have the option of defining bindings to the API for use from other languages. For example, my initial, weak inclination is to target a native C99 ...